coutesy reply mail
Postal Service has survived past challenges — and it will again
By DAVID BECKER II
Special to the Herald-Journal
Published: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 3:15 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 6:50 p.m.
The Herald-Journal’s recent editorial, “Postal progress,” begged for balance in both logic and facts about the U.S. Postal Service, our employees and customers. Here’s some food for thought for your readers.
While it’s true that the recession and the Internet are contributing to difficult financial circumstances for the Postal Service, the major cause of loss of mail volume and revenue is the economy. Let’s not all throw in the towel and turn to the Internet without considering some important facts:
* The U.S. Postal Service is our nation’s third largest employer; its employees and customers represent a functioning, viable $900 billion economic cornerstone of our economy in a time when jobs are scarce.
* Eight-two percent of Americans still pay their bills by mail.
* Like other American businesses, the Internet has revolutionized customer service for the Postal Service with usps.com providing 80 percent of the services you get at a post office. In 2008, stamp and retail sales at the Postal Store totaled more than $442 million.
* The Postal Service has the largest fleet of alternative fuel vehicles in the nation: 43,000 in all.
* According to the Environmental Protection Agency, advertising mail accounts for less than 2.4 percent of municipal waste in landfills.
* Postal Service Priority and Express packaging is free, eco-friendly and recyclable.
* Thanks to the Postal Inspection Service and the Office of the Inspector General, delivery of your mail is secure.
* Less than 4 percent of identity theft happens through the mail; the remainder comes from illegal computer access of personal information.
* Without the Postal Service providing affordable, universal, surcharge-free prices, private shipping rates would likely skyrocket.
* Is e-mail cheaper than a 44-cent stamp? Consider the cost of the computer, the Internet service provider fee, the power bill and the ongoing equipment upgrades.
* About one-third of our population does not have Internet access.
* Ideas to charge per e-mail already have been considered by Internet service providers. Without a postal alternative, service providers could charge and raise the cost for each e-mail at will.
* Other forms of communication (TV and the Internet) have a considerable negative environmental impact, sending outmoded models to landfills by the millions. According to the National Safety Council, only 11 percent of computers get recycled, and small-time consumers alone add 10 million computers to landfills each year.
From the telegraph to the Internet, new technology has historically caused many predictions of the end of the Postal Service. But because the Postal Service is able to adapt and change to ensure secure, affordable, universal delivery, it has withstood similar threats to serve our country for almost 250 years.
David Becker II is the Spartanburg postmaster.
Lands’ End becomes first catalogue client of Royal Mail’s Sustainable Mail service
by Noelle McElhatton, Marketing Direct 27-May-09, 09:00
LONDON – Upmarket clothes catalogue Lands’ End has been signed up as the first mail order client of Royal Mail’s green DM postal service, Sustainable Mail.
The service, launched in April, offers a lower price tariff for mail that meets environmental criteria in line with the new DM green standard, PAS 20:20. Black Horse Personal Finance and Standard Life are already using Sustainable Mail.
Lands’ End, which sells high quality casual clothing and footwear by mail order and online, has just posted its first catalogues using the Sustainable Mail service.
Direct mail posted through Sustainable Mail is priced up to 4.7 per cent lower than standard Mailsort prices and is available to mail users that meet criteria based on three environmental criteria: improved sustainability, minimised waste and increased recyclability.
Tim Curtis, Lands’ End managing director, said Sustainable Mail would help the mail order firm “ensure every aspect of our catalogue distribution programme is sustainable”.
“We were already doing what we thought was right for the environment, such as delivering our catalogues without polywrap, but Sustainable Mail highlighted other ways we could be more environmentally friendly, and rewards us for doing them. It’s a great service and we’re delighted to give it our seal of approval.”
Why shippers like zoneskipping
By Toby B. Gooley, Senior Editor –Logistics Management,02/01/2001
L.L. Bean does it. Lillian Vernon does it. Fingerhut does it. Miles Kimball does it. So do the Home Shopping Network, Victoria’s Secret, and QVC.
What are these and other mail-order specialists doing? They’re all shipping thousands of parcels each week, and they’ve all found a way to save money doing it.
Their “secret” is a money-saving practice known as “zoneskipping.” Zoneskipping, in essence, is the technique of moving parcels part way across the country by truck or air and then inserting them into the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) units closest to their destinations. This saves the USPS a significant amount of money, and some of those savings are passed on to the shippers and consolidators.
Recent changes in Postal Service policies and a rise in the number of parcel shipments are making zoneskipping an increasingly popular choice for shippers. What follows is a look at how zoneskipping works, what benefits it offers, and the industry and economic trends that are driving its growth.
The Closer It Is, the Cheaper It Is
Parcel consolidation (also called parcel expediting) is often referred to as zoneskipping because the parcels “skip” over some of the eight geographical zones established by the Postal Service for pricing purposes. How many zones a parcel “touches” determines its shipping rate: A parcel that travels through the postal system from Boston to California, for example, would cross eight zones and therefore would be charged the highest rate.
With zoneskipping, parcel consolidators and large shippers that have sufficient volumes and weight can instead truck or fly parcels directly to USPS distribution centers closer to the destination, so that packages only touch four or fewer zones within the postal system. That saves the USPS money on transportation and labor. In return, consolidators and shippers get faster delivery at a lower cost, because they are piggybacking on the Postal Service’s ability to deliver to every household in the United States.
The USPS encourages zoneskipping through its “Parcel Select” program. Parcels can be inserted into the postal system at one of three levels: the 21 regional bulk mail facilities (BMCs), 467 sectional center facilities (SCFs), and more than 40,000 destination delivery units (DDUs) or neighborhood post offices. BMCs generally serve two to four states. SCFs serve addresses within a radius of several hundred miles, and DDUs generally serve all or part of an individual town or city, explains Larry Wood, associate vice president, e-business for the U.S. Postal Service in Roswell, Ga.
Parcel Select has only been available since January 1999. The Postal Service had allowed drop-shipped deliveries to BMCs for many years but did not allow customers to insert packages any deeper into the system. Some companies, meanwhile, were zoneskipping using United Parcel Service, but the package carrier stopped accepting that business from consolidators in the early 1990s. (According to a representative, UPS does allow shippers to zoneskip, but the service is not widely used.) In the late’ 90s, the USPS, recognizing that parcel volumes – and thus handling costs – were soaring, changed its policies to encourage consolidations.
The potential savings are impressive. For example, shipping costs for a six-pound package that is delivered to a BMC so that it crosses just five zones would run $5.22. The price drops with the number of zones: If it travels through four zones, the rate is $4.05; through three zones, the rate is $3.68; and for Zones 1 and 2, the rate is $2.84. Take that package to an SCF, and the rate falls to $2.12. At the DDU level, it’s a mere $1.41. (Rate tables for Parcel Select, including the Jan. 7 rate increase, are available in pdf format at www.usps.com .)
Consolidators Come On Strong
Those rates are not available to just anyone, however. Parcel Select customers must meet certain minimum weight and volume criteria, and sort packages according to specified procedures in order to participate. Although Wood says he does not consider the rules to be onerous, others disagree. The high volumes needed to qualify for reduced rates mean that few shippers can get those discounts on their own, says Satish Jindel, a former RPS executive and now a parcel-industry consultant in Pittsburgh.
That’s where parcel consolidators come into the picture. Because they consolidate packages from many shippers, they have the volumes needed to qualify for delivery to SCFs and DDUs. Jindel estimates that consolidators handle almost all of the 800,000 daily parcel shipments. About three-fourths of that, he estimates, comes from a single company: R.R. Donnelly Logistics, which recently absorbed the “king” of the parcel consolidation business, CTC Distribution Direct.
Chicago-based Donnelly and its main competitor, Quad/Graphics subsidiary Parcel/Direct in New Berlin, Wis., grew out of existing mail-oriented businesses. Their parent companies are printers of catalogs, magazines, and other direct-mail items, which gives them several advantages in the parcel-consolidation game, company executives say. They have decades of experience in drop-shipping printed matter into the postal system, and because they already handle delivery of catalogs to consumers, they’re a natural for handling the catalogers’ parcel business, too. And their ability to combine their parcel traffic with shipments of printed matter allows them to get the best rates nationwide. “We handle more than 100 million parcels a year … and four billion pounds – 20 billion pieces – of printed matter annually,” notes R.R. Donnelly Logistics Senior Vice President Matt Bernstein. “That tremendous volume allows us to reach more DDUs more frequently than anyone else,” he says. Similarly, Parcel/Direct takes advantage of Quad/Graphics’ 20 million weekly mail pieces to create more efficient loads, minimize accumulation time, and make fewer stops en route to the destinations, says Steve DeFilippis, vice president of sales and marketing.
Their shipment volumes give giants like R.R. Donnelly and Parcel/Direct a clear advantage. But they are not the only players in the game. Other consolidators, including Drop Ship Express of Long Lake, Minn.; West Coast specialist PaQFast Inc. (PFI); Reno, Nev.-based Regional Mail Express – number 233 on last year’s Inc. 500 list of the country’s fastest-growing companies – and even Airborne Express’s “Airborne@home” and Emery Worldwide’s “Parcel@Home” services, are experiencing rapid growth.
What’s fueling growth for the mid-sized regional as well as the national players? The explosion in online retailing, strong catalog/mail-order sales, and direct marketing through television are all contributing to an increase in parcel shipments. By one estimate, the number of parcel shipments in the United States will double over the next five years. As a result, parcel consolidators are targeting these retailers, particularly the dot-com and television marketers, says Frans Nelson, president of Regional Mail Express (RMX). Direct TV marketers, who sell through infomercials, have been a big growth area for his company, Nelson adds.
Nelson predicts that some of the e-tail business that has been funneled through overnight services will shift to parcel consolidators. “Right now, e-commerce companies are focusing on how to get products to the consumer the quickest way rather than at the lowest cost,” he observes. “But people will soon be looking for alternative ways to deliver.” Bernstein of R.R. Donnelly agrees. He believes that the capital squeeze that is forcing e-tailers to focus on cost cutting and becoming profitable will lead more of them to look at parcel consolidation.
As express companies like FedEx and UPS continue to raise their rates, adds DeFilippis of Parcel/Direct, consumers will be less willing to pay for overnight services. “With the cost of overnight and priority shipping sometimes totaling more than the items themselves, consumers are comfortable waiting an extra day or two for their orders,” he says. “This opens the door for consolidators who do not have the ability to provide overnight service.”
Expanded Service at a Lower Cost
Consolidators believe their business will continue to grow not only because they save shippers money, but also because they provide many of the same services and benefits that the traditional express carriers do at a lower cost. Says Jindel: “For the business-to-consumer model, they offer a very good proposition.”
First and foremost, they say, zoneskipping lets them deliver packages very quickly. According to Wood of the U.S. Postal Service, his organization’s goal is to deliver parcels received at BMCs to the end customer within three days, from SCFs within two days, and from DDUs, within one day after receipt.
Consolidators also offer tracking systems that follow shipments up to the point of insertion into the postal system. Shippers that choose to pay for delivery confirmation by the USPS can track shipments from door to door because most consolidators have integrated the Postal Service’s tracking information into their own systems.
Shippers also benefit from the consolidators’ years of experience in working within the postal system. They are experts at complying with Postal Service regulations and documentation requirements, and they meet regularly with USPS officials to keep current on developments and solve any service problems.
Finally, shippers can take advantage of the consolidators’ fee-based value-added services. Just a few of the many examples: RMX can provide call-center capabilities, electronic order processing, returns management, and custom packaging services for direct marketers. R.R. Donnelly Logistics offers “virtual distribution” in which it takes products directly from the manufacturer and routes them to one of its own distribution centers, where they are labeled and prepared for shipment. Drop Ship Express lets customers warehouse products and printed matter in its distribution centers. Shippers can electronically transmit address label files when a shipment is needed. And Parcel/Direct offers a package of services it calls “Dock Door to Doorstep,” where the consolidator will manage every step from inbound receipt to final consumer delivery.
The Consolidators Consolidate
The future would appear to be bright indeed for parcel consolidators. Nelson, for one, believes that the USPS eventually will outsource virtually all parcel handling to consolidators.
But there are some potentially troubling trends in sight – particularly if shipping volumes drop as the U.S. economy slows and more dot-coms close their doors. Volume growth is critical to the future of parcel consolidators, explains Don Berry, vice president of sales and marketing for Drop Ship Express, which handles more than one million pieces of mail and parcels weekly. “This is a volume business,” he says. “If you don’t have the volume, then you can’t get the sorts. If you can’t get the sorts, then you can’t get the pricing you need. Volume is one big barrier to entry into this market segment.”
In fact, Paxis, a joint venture of GATX Logistics and Lockheed Martin, shut down last November largely because of insufficient package volumes, says a former company executive who asked not to be named. Paxis had spent millions of dollars on automated processing facilities that used Lockheed Martin’s technology, but “we just ran out of runway with the investors” after less than two years in business, he says. “That’s the Catch-22 – you have to have the volumes to have economical deliveries, and you have to have economical deliveries to stay in business.”
Ultimately, consolidation among the consolidators themselves seems inevitable. R.R. Donnelly’s acquisition of CTC Direct early last year made it by far the largest in this industry segment. And Bernstein believes that further industry consolidation is unavoidable. “The consolidation will be driven by what the national catalogers need. They are migrating toward companies that are growing, are financially stable, and offer national coverage,” he says. Consultant Jindel agrees that there could be a showdown on the national scene: “I think you’ll see some of the smaller guys closing down,” he says. “Nationally there is only room for about three big guys.”
Yet those “smaller guys” say they can be very successful without going national. “I think we’ll see more selective marketing in niche markets,” says RMX’s Nelson, whose own company targets specific types of shippers and distribution channels. Regional and commodity specialists will come under increasing pressure, he predicts. “They’ll do quite well in their niche markets, but they’re going to have to withstand pressure from the big national guys that want to buy them.”
The Logistics of Zoneskipping
Although parcel consolidators use the U.S. Postal Service’s infrastructure for delivering parcels, they must all make significant investments in parcel processing and distribution centers. At these distribution centers, they typically manage the pickup of packages from their customers; sorting by destination; transportation to the appropriate BMC, SCF, or DDU; and value-added services like labeling and warehousing.
The number of distribution centers varies among the consolidators. Parcel/Direct, for example, has four “mega sortation centers” and this year will open five smaller centers, all of which serve states east of the Rocky Mountains. The company serves the West Coast through an agreement with PaQFast Inc. (PFI), in which it is an investor. Regional Mail Express (RMX) has nine sortation centers and additional warehousing capabilities nationwide. Drop Ship Express has six distribution centers and has plans for six more. R.R. Donnelly, the largest of the consolidators, has 24 such facilities, thanks to its recent acquisition of CTC Distribution Direct, the largest parcel consolidator in the United States. Some of those facilities are likely to be closed, however, because there is some duplication.
Where the distribution centers are located depends largely on where the big consumer markets are. Other considerations include proximity to Postal Service facilities and proximity to major transportation hubs. Most consolidators have a private fleet that handles some pickups at customers’ facilities and brings shipments to the distribution centers. They also regularly use for-hire transportation for pickups. Transportation from the distribution centers to the Postal Service centers generally is by truckload or LTL, but some consolidators, such as RMX and Drop Ship Express, also offer an airfreight option.
Most consolidations are delivered to SCFs because economical delivery to destination delivery units (DDUs) would require either enormous daily volumes or an army of local delivery vehicles. But even deliveries to SCFs can be expedited. RMX, for example, delivers 95 percent of its business to SCFs, but it delivers those packages in bags already sorted by DDU. As RMX president Frans Nelson explains, “It’s a cross-dock for the USPS because it doesn’t need to sort the packages. We don’t save any more money, but we get the time.”
Summer Postage Sale – well, sort of a sale, no, more like a small rebate
summer sale
To those that are excited about the impending summer postage sale, there are a few details you need to know, first, did you receive a letter from the USPS recently?
Here is what it looks like: summer-sale-electronic-letter
Here are the details:
The USPS has made it official (almost) that they are going forward with the proposed ‘Summer Sale’ event. The PRC must still weigh in with their decision, which is expected in late May, to make this program official. This program would provide a 30% postage credit on mailings submitted between July 1, 2009 and September 30, 2009. This incentive program is designed to increase mailing activity during the usually dormant summer months, when the USPS has their most excess capacity available.
Unlike most sales however, there are a multitude of qualifiers that apply to the Summer Sale.
Who and what qualifies?
For the most part, the USPS has already determined what mailers qualify. Letters were sent out on 5/7/09 to approximately 3,200 mailers whom they determined will be eligible for this program by utilizing the mail volume data that exists within their internal system.
1. This program only applies to Presorted Standard letters and flats.
2. The next qualifier is that you must have mailed a minimum of 1,000,000 pieces during the time period of October 1, 2007 and March 31, 2008. Total volume is calculated by mailer, so even if you utilize multiple permits, your total volume will be calculated across all permits that are associated to your organization. This also applies to “Ghost Numbersâ€, which are created if your mail is sent through a Mail Service Provider. If you feel you are eligible, but have not received a letter, then you can request a contact by emailing your information to summersale@usps.gov.
If you have met the criteria above, you are ready to begin to calculate the ‘Sale’ portion of the program. The 30% postage credit will be given only on the number of mail pieces that exceed your mailing threshold for the time period of July 1, 2009 to September 30, 2009. The caveat to this all is that your mail volume in October must not fall below your mailing threshold for that month. If this occurs; the total credit accrued from mailings between 7/1/09 to 9/30/09 will be deducted by the amount of pieces that fell below the threshold in October and that will be the final credit. The credit will be issued at some point in December of 2009 once the USPS has completed the above calculations.
How to calculate your potential savings:
Below is an example of how to calculate the savings that you as a mailer may receive through this program. Listed in this example is the all important Threshold, which will be the key to planning your mailings to take advantage of this program.
1. Base volume (7/1/08 – 9/30/08): 500,000 pieces
2. Trend:
a. Volume 10/1/08 – 3/31/09 = 1,800,000 pieces
b. Volume 10/1/07 – 3/31/08 = 2,000,000 pieces
c. a/b = (1,800,000 / 2,000,000) = .90 or 90%
3. Base x trend = Threshold:
500,000 x .90 = 450,000
4. Rebate = (Actual volume – threshold) x (actual postage cost / actual volume) x 30%
a. Actual volume for 7/1/09 – 9/30/09 – threshold =
475,000 – 450,000 = 25,000 pieces
b. Actual postage cost / actual volume =
$103,075 / 475,000 = $0.217
c. Rebate =
25,000 x $0.217 x .3 = $1627.50
The October Effect:
It is important to keep your mailing volume for October in mind when factoring the potential savings. If your volume falls below the calculated threshold, then your overall credit will be impacted. Below is an example of how to calculate this effect.
a. October 2008 volume x trend (in #2 above) = October threshold:
300,000 x .90 = 270,000 pieces
b. If October 2009 (260,000 pieces) < October threshold:
Threshold – actual = adjustment
270,000 – 260,000 = 10,000
Rebate adjustment
a. Actual volume – summer sale threshold – rebate adjustment:
475,000 – 450,000 – 10,000 = 15,000
b. New rebate:
15,000 x $.217 x .3 = $976.50
For those of you that have received a letter; be sure to certify the volume that the USPS has provided to you since this will be a binding once you have agreed to enroll in the program. Also be sure to have your response in by August 1st, 2009.
This program is a great way to potentially reach more customers at a lower cost and therefore enhance your business’ ROI. The system is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction for the USPS to utilize their new found pricing freedom to help mailers.
From the Federal Register today:
Federal Register Notices
DATE: Pending publication in the Federal Register.
Standard Mail Volume Incentive Program (aka Summer Sale)
AGENCY: Postal Serviceâ„¢.
ACTION: Final rule.
SUMMARY:
The Postal Service is revising Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, Domestic Mail Manual (DMM®), to add section 709.2 which introduces new standards for a special volume incentive program for mailers of Standard Mail® letters and flats with mail volume exceeding their individual USPS™-determined threshold levels. The program period will be from July 1, 2009 through September 30, 2009.
EFFECTIVE DATE: July 1, 2009.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Kevin Gunther at 202-268-7208.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
The Postal Service is implementing a volume incentive program for qualified high-volume mailers of commercial or Nonprofit Standard Mail letters and flats, for volume mailed between July 1, 2009 and September 30, 2009, above their USPS-determined threshold level. This program encourages mailers to provide new volume and to take advantage of our current excess capacity to process and deliver additional volume.
Postal detectives crack the case of messy, missing addresses
Barbara Trumpp (bottom center) and Arlene Jones (bottom right) process mail at the United States Postal Service Glendale Remote Encoding Center.
The Arizona Republic
Without leaving their cubicles, U.S. Postal Service sleuths in Glendale solve more than a million mail-delivery mysteries daily for post offices nationwide. Their wits and their computers are their only tools.
Is that a 3 or an 8? Senvisa or S. Envisa? Is a letter addressed “FCCI, Georgia” intended for the southern state’s FCCI Insurance Group in Duluth? Because it could be meant for the Floyd County Correctional Institute in Rome or the Fellowship of Companies for Christ International in Atlanta.
Sloppy handwriting and incomplete addresses, it turns out, almost succeed where snow, rain, heat and gloom of night fail in staying mail carriers from completing their rounds.
But those hard-to-read addresses usually don’t slow carriers because data-conversion operators using their best detecting skills are at work around the clock at the USPS Glendale Remote Encoding Center, save for the 10 hours it’s closed on Sundays.
The Glendale center is one of five in the United States – there were 55 when the postal service opened them in 1995 – devoted to interpreting scrawls and squiggles, blurs, smudges, missing information and otherwise ambiguous addresses.
In other words, the stuff that stumps the postal service’s sophisticated optical character-recognition software.
“This work makes me take a few extra minutes when I address my own envelopes,” says Debra Napier, one of more than 700 data-conversion operators, called keyers for short, employed at the site.
She’s seated in the midst of long rows of cubicles in a room adorned by little more than signs with U.S. cities’ names. Her eyes rarely stray from her computer.
Electronic images of envelopes sitting in 41 mail-processing plants across the U.S. flash onscreen, one after another, calling on her ability to decipher the shaky handwriting of a letter writer with arthritis or to see past the stickers obscuring an address. Twelve years as a teacher prepared her well for this job.
Napier also has learned a thing or two along the way. When addressing Christmas or birthday cards, she painstakingly prints rather than writing in cursive. She uses white envelopes even for Christmas cards, because addresses are hard to read on dark backgrounds. And forget silver ink.
Although most of the mail that keyers puzzle over is hand-addressed, they also see pieces printed with ink cartridges long overdue for replacement or displaying printer-produced addresses haphazardly positioned on envelopes.
In most cases, a machine at a mail-processing plant reads the address on an envelope, sprays on an ink barcode and sends the envelope on its way, keyer Steve Karr says. When the machine fails to read the address, an electronic image of the envelope is sent to a remote encoding center.
In the Glendale facility, the fastest keyers, like Karr, may handle an eye-blurring 900 to 1,000 images in an hour. Keyers succeed with as many as 75 percent of the pieces they process, says Chuck Van Dyke, manager of the Glendale Remote Encoding Center.
Aided by the postal service’s more than 2 petabytes of online data (think 4,000 years-plus of songs on your MP3 player), keyers examine the slightest clues – two digits of a ZIP code, a street name without house numbers, the first letter of a state abbreviation – and draw conclusions.
Postal abbreviations for four states start with an “A.” That letter coupled with a ZIP code beginning with 8 tells keyers the mail should go to someone in Arizona, not Alabama, Alaska or Arkansas.
Kerr, with 13 years on the job, peers at his screen and sees a sliver of a number, determining what it is based on its position between other numbers. On another envelope, he notices that a sender who inadvertently reversed positions for the mail and return addresses has scrawled arrows to indicate the mistake.
The goal is turning around each piece in no more than 20 minutes, Van Dyke says.
But the process usually is far speedier. As staff members work, they’re thinking about the child eager for a birthday card or the person looking for her W2 form so she can file her income-tax return.
“Back at the plant that has the indecipherable letter, there’s a truck getting ready to carry the mail,” Van Dyke says, “and it leaves by 10 p.m. local time. The times are lined up on the computer so keyers can see which of the pieces of mail they’re working on are becoming critical timewise.”
Such scenarios occur less frequently these days. Advances in technology have made the postal system’s optical scanning equipment capable of reading 95 percent of handwritten envelopes, up from 2 percent when the centers opened, Van Dyke says.
With demand for their work decreasing, three of the remaining remote encoding centers will be closed, the Glendale facility in May 2010.
Still, even the most advanced optical scanning and the best efforts of data-conversion operators fail at times to divine a letter’s destination. Then, once more, a human must intervene.
A letter addressed “Jane Doe, Second House Around the Corner from the Barber Shop, St. Peter, MN”?
That will go to Minnesota, where a mail carrier in the small town of St. Peter knows exactly whose mailbox to tuck the letter into.
Finnish postal union to go ahead with stoppage
So check this out, at least I never recall the USPS stopping delivery on mail. See it can always get worse!
The Finnish Post and Logistics Workers´ Union (Pau) is to stage a six-hour stoppage on Wednesday, leading to delays in postal services for the rest of the week.
The union maintains that there is ambivalence about whether permanent unemployment pension could be treated as a legitimate outcome in cooperation procedure talks in government-owned companies like Itella, formerly known as Finland Post.
Jyri Häkämies (cons), the minister in charge of ownership policy, had previously approved permanent unemployment pension as a legitimate option.
Itella said last week it wanted to cut some 390 jobs.
Did you know you could ship animals through the mail???
The Postal Service proposes to revise the Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, Domestic Mail Manual (DMM®) by changing the refund guarantees for Express Mail shipments of live animals delivered within 3 days of the date of mailing. In some instances, the Postal Service must reroute Express Mail shipments of live animals to alternative flights or routes in order to protect the well-being of the live animals. This is particularly necessary if other shipments on the same flight contain dry ice or solid carbon dioxide, which will evaporate en route and may displace oxygen. If live animals were shipped in the same cargo hold, the carbon dioxide could cause asphyxiation. The use of alternative flights and rerouting to protect the well-being of the live animals can delay shipments. Therefore, even though the live animals arrive as promptly as possible and in good health, these shipments may not meet normal Express Mail service guarantees. In those instances, some mailers then apply for full postage refunds.
Currently, postage refunds for Express Mail shipments of live animals are granted based on the next day or second day delivery guarantee provided at the time of mailing. This current postage refund policy does not account for the flight changes that may occur to protect the well-being of the animals. Therefore, the Postal Service is proposing that Express Mail shipments containing live animals be exempt from the next day or second day delivery guarantee and that the delivery commitment for Express Mail of live animals be extended to within 3 days of the date of mailing. Postage refund requests for Express Mail shipments of live animals delivered after 3 days of the date mailing would still be granted.
Postal worker arrested on mail theft charges
I think it is pretty impressive they caught this guy, how often do you think this happens and no one gets caught, especially in bigger cities.
|
Parish (WSYR-TV) – Federal prosecutors have arrested and charged an Oswego County postal employee following a complaint from a customer, who said greeting cards mailed never arrived. Christa Koagel, 28, of Parish, is charged by complaint with knowingly, intentionally, and willfully stealing items of the U.S. mail. The investigation began in December 2008, the Inspector General for the United States Postal Service received a complaint from a postal customer regarding several greeting cards containing U.S. currency that the customer mailed, but were never delivered to the intended recipient. If convicted of the Mail Theft charge, Koagel faces a term of imprisonment of up to five years and a fine of up to $250,000. |
Pompous self-righteous dork
Ok Ok, my feelings are expressed in the title of this blog, I just don’t get it, and maybe I’m the idiot dork. What would the world be like without mail? Do you think you won’t get bills or other bad news? Do you know how many industries are supported by direct mail, what are you thinking? And do you think that little of savvy direct marketers that they think they can just use, as you call it “spam” or email instead of direct mail? If it were that easy and effective don’t you think this would have been done long ago? Is this really the bright spot of the economic downturn, less junk mail, is it really that bothersome? All questions i would love to know the answers for.
 You tell me, check out the video:
It ain’t easy!!!
YONKERS – Police have charged a Yonkers woman with attacking a 50-year-old male postal worker as he delivered mail on Wednesday morning.
The woman, identified by Yonkers City Police as Rosemarie Santos, 20, approached the mailman and claimed that her monthly benefit check was in another person’s mailbox. When the postal worker did not open the other mailbox, she became enraged and punched and scratched the man. She also stole his Bluetooth headset and refused to return it.
Police arrested Santos and charged her with second-degree robbery. The letter carrier was treated and released at a local hospital for a laceration to his left hand.
Subscribe
Recent Comments
- Adam Hartung, Chicago, IL on Are You Disruptive?
- Tweets that mention Why Direct Mail Will Always Be In Style | Going Postal -- Topsy.com on Why Direct Mail Will Always Be In Style
- Tweets that mention Less mail equals more opportunity | Going Postal -- Topsy.com on Less mail equals more opportunity
- Tweets that mention Direct Mail Scare Tactics… | Going Postal -- Topsy.com on Direct Mail Scare Tactics…
- Tweets that mention Post Office Bailout… Not So Fast | Going Postal -- Topsy.com on Post Office Bailout… Not So Fast